The mammalian sense of smell is an excellent chemical sensing system that far outshines any man-made reproduction, so researchers have long been trying to analyze and recreate the animal olfactory system to develop artificial ‘noses'. Now, in a study conducted by lecturers from the Department of Electronics Santiago Marco, Agustín Gutierrez-Galvez and Jordi Fonollosa, researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), attached to the HUBc, the health campus of the University of Barcelona, have shed new light on this highly efficient system that could allow better chemical sensing systems with important applications in such critical areas as health, security or the food industry.

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In their paper published in PlosOne, the researchers have analyzed how chemical information is coded and processed to better understand mammals’ olfactory system. To do this, they looked at the performance of the early rat olfactory system in identifying the quality of the incoming stimuli –that is, its ability to detect and discriminate different odours– and made an analysis of their results by quantifying the number of smells that could be coded by a particular set of odour receptors (ORs) in the system.

Previous work has shown that a particular olfactory system adapts to the statistical properties of the set of chemicals to which it is exposed. It has entailed an immense feat of systematic mapping, due to the large number of receptors found in rats and the huge amount of potential ligands. They also looked at the capacity to discriminate smells depending on distribution, and the correlation among receptors. In addition, instead of relying on simplified theoretical models, they used actual olfactory bulb data from an extensive database made available by the University of California Irvine.

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